GOOD QUOTES

My pick of the latest quotes from the "Fed":

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. [They] justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." -- T. S. Elliot

"If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time a tremendous whack." -- Winston Churchill

"I know what it's like to pull the Republican lever for the first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just great." -- Ronald Reagan

"The bottom line is that Democrats have no solutions for economic stagnation, unbalanced budgets and threats to our national security, so they're reduced to obstruction and negativity, and the public smells it, which will have major consequences in the elections." -- David Limbaugh


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MORE PARDONS!

An amusing comment on the last-minute Clinton pardons here -- from Big Gold Dog.

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PROTESTANT INDEPENDENCE

Dave Mecklenburg of Sabertooth Journal has for some time taken an interest in the relationship between the churches and politics so he had a couple of good points to make to me in an email about my recent posts on Catholic/Protestant differences.

He rightly took me to task for speaking of Protestants �negotiating� their salvation with God directly. That WAS a bit flippant. I am afraid that the atheist in me peeps out at times. Protestants of course believe that salvation is by God�s grace and not the product of negotiation. What I should have said of course is simply that the Protestant feels no need of an intermediary between himself/herself and God.

He also pointed out that my claim that Protestantism is a �decentralized� faith sits poorly with the existence of �National� Protestant churches in England and the Scandinavian countries. My response is that the degree of centralization that he refers to was in part a defensive move on the part of Protestants. Protestant England was under very real threat from Catholic France and Spain (remember the Armada?) and the North German and Scandinavian States had to fight the famous Thirty Years War (1618-1648) to retain their independence from the Catholic Hapsburg Empire in the South. So unity was strength.

Also, of course, at that time Princes and Kings decided and people obeyed. If the local Prince or King decided that his subjects were to be Protestant (or Catholic) wise men just fell into line. Those who stood up for their faith against Royal or Princely edict were only ever a small minority -- albeit an heroic and important minority. So it is an immense tribute to the popularity of Protestant thinking in Germany that it broke through all that at all. Protestant sentiment was so popular that various Princes saw political advantage in giving it their seal of approval and protection. But, once the Prince came to his decision, it was of course �one in, all in�. Those who REALLY disapproved of their Prince�s choice could move to another nearby State that had a Prince with a different policy. And in England, of course, even Royal edict never succeeded in bringing about anything like religious uniformity.

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CONSERVATISM AS REALISM

Philosoblog has been putting libertarianism to the sword a bit lately and is now trying to define conservatism. The definition given is a bit partisan and probably untestable but it has a lot of resonance nonethless. The core of it seems to be:

What makes a conservative: undaunted acceptance of fact and devotion to truth, plus allegiance to traditional, tried-and-true values, as long as they are not found to be refuted by the facts

The trouble with defining conservatism as pragmatism and realism about the world is not that it is untrue (I believe both to be as central as the Philosoblog author does) but that it is always going to be contentious to define what the reality of any given situation is. Whereas if we define conservatism as suspicion of big government, people on both sides of politics will tend to nod wisely in recognition of an obvious truth.

So that seems to make me meta-conservative: If conservatism is pragmatism, I am even being pragmatic about defining conservatism. In other words, regardless of what the direction of causation (if any) is, I think we would get further by proposing realism and pragmatism as attributes of conservatives rather than using them to form a definition of conservatism.

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